NYPD: Woman Attacks Man With Shoe At Queens Subway Station
NEW YORK (CBSNewYork) -- Police late Thursday were searching for a woman who attacked an unsuspecting stranger on a subway platform in Queens earlier this week.
As CBS2's Dave Carlin reported, the man said the woman beat him with a shoe. The victim shared his story only with CSB2's Dave Carlin.
"She is mentally ill -- my best guess," said Chris Pandit.
Police said Pandit, a 24-year-old college student, was at the northbound A Train platform on 88th Street and Boyd Avenue at around 3 p.m. on Tuesday when the suspect, described as a woman in her 40s, took off her shoe and used it to strike the victim in the face.
The suspect fled after the attack, police said. The victim received an injury to his left eye.
"She just come up to him and hit him in the eye just like that," Christine Ortiz, Pandit's mother told CBS2's Dave Carlin. "I think she was a crazy woman.
A blurry photo of the woman was released. Pandit hopes to help stop the woman, whom he called crazy.
Pandit worries someone else could be on the receiving end of the woman's heavy wedge shoe.
"She hit me multiple times," he said.
Pandit said he did not talk to the woman, say anything or look at her before the attack.
"I just walked past her on the platform. She came up to me," he said.
The alleged attack left the Pandit, a film student, with a bruised scratched eyelid and scratched forehead.
The woman put her shoe back on and ran down the steps and over to the opposite platform, where he snapped the photos of her.
Pandit got one more photo of the woman on the subway train, jumping out before the doors closed, and she got away.
"It's crazy but not unusual," Bill Rodriguez, of Ozone Park, said. "Especially this train the A line, it's a bunch of nuts in there."
There are so many apparently unprovoked attacks here on the streets down the subway system that many people are wondering whether they will still become victims even if they are just minding their own business.
"The city has to do more in protecting, you know, the New York City people," said Barbara Kavovit of the Upper East Side.
"I think people are frustrated, and I think that's what happened," said tourist Michael Cotter.
They've seen disturbing surveillance videos of people assaulted seemingly without provokation.
In one recent incident, an 85-year-old man was punched by a stranger while walking in a Carl Schurz Park on the Upper East Side, near Gracie Mansion, last month.
Edwin Suazo, 35, was charged with second-degree assault in the attack.
And back on June 26, Patrick Gorman, 64, was at the corner of Queens Boulevard and Main Street in Queens when he got blindsided with a closed first blow to the skull that killed him.
Two suspects are on the loose in that incident.
In the Tuesday shoe attack, the NYPD describes the suspect as 5 feet 7 inches tall with brown eyes and gray hair. She was last seen wearing a black leather jacket with black shoes and blue jeans.
Police are asking anyone with information to contact Crime Stoppers at (800) 577-TIPS, or by logging on to their website at www.NYPDcrimestoppers.com. Tips can remain anonymous.
